With Walnut Studios, condo developers and artists have found a way to live in productive harmony

From the outside, 83 Walnut Ave. doesn’t look like much more than an old warehouse. In fact, it was supposed to be torn down in 2008 to make room for seven townhouses, but because of red tape at City Hall, the building near King and Bathurst is now a thriving arts community where painters, sculptors, mixed-media artists and fashion and jewellery designers work in the open-space studio inside.
Jason Martins, the owner of Walnut Studios, was approached that same year by artists looking to rent space in what was then an empty warehouse. Since the 34-year-old real estate developer, who owns 16 commercial and residential buildings in the downtown core with his father under the banner MJI Development, was waiting for an unusually long time for the city to approve his plan for townhouses, he figured he had nothing to lose.

“Why not make some rent while I was waiting?” he says, sitting upstairs at Walnut Studios where, on Tuesday evenings, community members pay $10 to drop in for life drawing classes. “After the artists moved in, I saw the power in it. I was intrigued,” he says.

At first, Walnut’s studio space was about 2,500 square feet, and it was fully rented in 30 days. Almost four and half years later, Martins has converted the rest of the warehouse into 7,000 square feet of space that houses 50 artists, all paying between $319 and $349 per month to use it. There are also plans to convert the Canadian Corps Legion hall on Niagara Street, purchased by Martins last year, into an event space and gallery for Walnut’s artists. Even though the city eventually approved Martins’ original plan, “I just knew I wasn’t going to build those townhouses,” he says. “My goal here now is to make this work.”

Martins is resolved to address what he calls Toronto’s problem of “one-way growth,” which sees condo towers continue to go up while artists are pushed out of the downtown.

The problem is not unique to Toronto, says Trinity-Spadina Councillor Mike Layton, adding that it’s a “classic model of rejuvenation: The artists move in and make it a happening place to be, then the process of gentrification begins and they are predominantly forced out.”

The city, he says, can influence how a development will look, but maintaining the “artistic social fabric of a community is up to the developers, who will ultimately rent to the people who can pay the most.”

For this reason, the Walnut artists are grateful for Martins’ big-picture approach, especially in light of what’s happening around the corner at 89-101 Niagara St., a.k.a. the Coffin Factory, where another group of artists live and work. In a recent application to the city, developers are proposing to build two condo towers behind the 19th-century warehouse, which itself would undergo restoration. The fate of the artists residing there is unknown.

Walnut artist and manager Ilene Sova has seen the effects of diminishing art spaces first-hand, citing an influx of applicants to Walnut following the 2008 closing of the Artscape space on Spadina Avenue. She also knew people at 48 Abell St., which at its peak housed 100 artists, but was torn down last November to make way for condos, and cites art spaces from the Danforth to Dufferin that have either been demolished, redeveloped or have plans to be redeveloped.

“I’m a big fan of Richard Florida’s creative city,” she says. “If Toronto wants to thrive we have to support creative neighbourhoods and people. At Walnut, we want to build an authentic cultural, artistic environment that the whole neighbourhood can benefit from.”

Part of that community commitment consists of art classes during the week. And for the first time at this weekend’s open house (May 12), students from Central Commerce Collegiate, whose teacher, Beckie DiLeo Ross, is also a Walnut artist, will display their work and discover what it’s like to be in a professional artistic environment.

That environment has made a huge impact on Ursula McDonnell, who painted murals professionally in the ’90s but put her art on hold to teach math at Lawrence Park Collegiate. She joined Walnut three years ago and now comes in three nights a week.

“Having taken 10 years off from my craft, being at Walnut has made me that much better in a shorter amount of time,” she says, crediting the collaborative environment for her creative output. “You’re constantly exchanging creative ideas, learning from each other and growing from each other — it’s pretty phenomenal.”
It’s a sentiment shared by Martins, who says he’s “grown so much personally” from his experience with Walnut.

“For me, this is in no way a connection of dollars and cents,” he says. “The developer and the artist, they’re supposed to hate each other, but when they work together it’s the best of both worlds.”